“It is largely determined by the mindset and practices of teamwork, not by the design and structures of effective teams. Teaming is teamwork on the fly.” – Professor Amy Edmondson, Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate, and Compete in the Knowledge Economy

When I started this post for Process Street, it suddenly occurred to me exactly how much of my time is spent on the concept of “teams” – writing about them, talking about them, thinking about them, participating in them.

Teams have taken over my life. It was only a matter of time before I ran into “teaming.”

Teaming was coined and developed by Professor Amy Edmondson, who also has the rather distinguished achievement of founding the MIT Leadership Center.

Obviously, she’s a very qualified person who knows what she’s talking about, but when has that ever stopped my skepticism before?

I’m kidding. Teaming is an idea purpose-built for the contemporary tech-centric, remote office, pivot on a dime work environment. This post will explain what it is, how it’s been used, and how Process Street makes it easy for anyone to adopt.

• “Teaming on the fly”
• Successful teams, teaming, and a Chilean mine
• Teaming the Process Street way

Let’s team up!
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Jaron Soh is Co-founder and COO at Traktion, the platform that makes hiring for growth simpler, agile, and more profitable for businesses.

According to a recent survey by The Digital Project Manager, the two biggest project management challenges of 2020 can be neatly summarised as people problems and project problems.

If that sounds a little vague, let’s get specific. 27% of those surveyed experienced challenges with their project stakeholders (i.e. people), while 24% encountered challenges with budgets and deadlines (you guessed it, project).

Thinking about this within the context of a marketing project, it’s easy to get distracted by those project-related concerns, wondering: “How do I deliver this on time and on budget?”

Well, here’s the thing… In my experience, you’re asking yourself the wrong question.

When it comes to marketing, don’t focus solely on the “how”; make sure you look at the “who”, too.

There’s a people problem to overcome. Ask who you should use to help deliver your marketing project on time and on budget; a solo marketing consultant, or a full-blown marketing agency? To answer that, you need to understand how they differ from one another, and the scenarios in which to use them.

In this Process Street post, we help you do just that. Here we explore:

• Agency vs. consultant: Spot the difference (pros & cons)
• Marketing agency vs. marketing consultant: When to use one or the other?
• Which is better for project managers?

Ready? Let’s dive in.
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Project management requires a wide spectrum of skills, organizational abilities, and attention to detail to make sure everything moves forward according to plan. A good project manager is able to keep all the plates spinning in sync while making it appear effortless at the same time.

However, the more plates you have spinning at once, the harder this is to accomplish. Critical path method (CPM) is one of the tools project managers can use to create a comprehensive plan and organize complex projects with many moving parts.

In this Process Street post, I’ll take you through the CPM process step-by-step, and then show you how our templates and checklists can take some of the stress out of your project management.

Read on, or feel free to skip ahead:

• Project management 101
• What is critical path method?
• Steps to effectively (and easily) use the critical path method
• Project management with Process Street

Let’s jump in!
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Quality management. Oh, how I love thee.

You’ve given us rubber flavored cookies, phones that go up in smoke, and exploding car airbags (we’ll get to all of that later).

Last year, 337 food products passed through stringent quality management procedures and went to market with major issues. So major, in fact, that each and every one of those products had to be recalled. This cost the US economy over $7 million.

But, the cost of poor quality management surrounding the production of food is only a tiny part of the picture:

“Defective product incidents have caused in excess of $2 billion of losses over five years” – Allianz, Product Recall, Managing the Impact of the New Risk Landscape

When you consider that the global quality management software market is valued at $7.96 billion, why are we, as consumers, still being exposed to low quality, defective products?

Because, contrary to what most organizations think, there is more to quality management than simply making a good product. You need to know how you’re going to make it good and how you’re going to make sure it remains good.

In other words, you need a plan. A quality management plan to be exact.

The reasons for this will become even clearer as we make our way through this Process Street post and discuss:

• What is a quality management plan?
• What is the most useful thing about a quality management plan?
• What’s included in a quality management plan?
• How to enforce a quality management plan

Let’s get planning.
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70% of projects fail, and the cost of this failure is a staggering $50-75 million.

Project breakdown can be mitigated via a project charter, and in this article, we at Process Street will show you how.

By following our Project Charter Template, you will target project failure from the root. Our template will guide you through the recognized process needed for successful project completion.

Click here to access our Project Charter Template!

From this article, you will learn what a project charter is and why you need one. The key elements that make a successful project charter and how you can implement these elements using our free Project Charter Template.

Click on the relevant subheader below to jump to the section of choice. Alternatively, scroll down to read all we have to say regarding project charters.

• What is a project charter?
• Elements that make a good project charter
• Why do you need to create a project charter?
• Project charter examples: When projects go wrong and how a project charter could have helped

Let’s get started!
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What do professional skydivers and successful project managers have in common?

They both identify, assess, and plan for risks.

Skydivers look at the conditions, equipment, and capabilities before, during, and after they jump out of planes. Project managers look at the conditions, equipment, and capabilities before, during, and after projects.

Why do they do that?

“To stay on top of potential issues that could derail intended outcomes” – Project Manager, Guide to Using a Risk Register

How do they do that?

Well, I don’t know how skydivers do it, but to identify, assess, and plan for risks, a good project manager is never far away from a risk register.

But, when I discovered that 81% of organizations feel their risk registers are ineffective at identifying and planning for potential risks, and 30% of projects fail as a direct result, I felt the need to write this Process Street post about how to create one.

So, listen up as we go through the following:

• What is a risk register & what does one contain?
• Why projects won’t survive without a risk register
• The 3 biggest mistakes to avoid when creating a risk register
• How to use Process Street to create a risk register

If you’re in a hurry, grab this free Risk Register Process Checklist now, and catch up with the what, why, and how later.

Got your parachute? Ready, set… Geeeeronimoooooo…

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I have a proposal for you.

I can build you a house, complete with walls, windows, doors, and a roof for $350,000.

Do we have a deal?

No. I didn’t think so!

To make a decision like this, you need cold hard facts. You need details, clarity, and proof! You need budgets, breakdowns, and solid guarantees.

That’s exactly how a project stakeholder feels when they receive your project proposal, and to further complicate things, calculating an average proposal win rate is next to impossible.

Project stakeholders will, on average, receive around 50 proposals a week. To choose you out of this huge pile, they need clarity, details, specifics, lateral thinking, and a whole heap of persuasion.

You need to learn the art of how to write a project proposal, to stand any chance of winning their investment, and increasing your proposal success rate.

So, join me in this Process Street post where we will take the following lessons in how to write a project proposal:

• Lesson #1: What a project proposal is
• Lesson #2: What a project proposal reviewer is really looking for
• Lesson #3: The surefire way to succeed with your project proposal
• Lesson #4: The 4 types of project proposal & how to create them (with tips & templates)
• Lesson #5: A little more about Process Street and how it can help your project proposals

If you’re in a hurry, grab this Project Proposal Template Checklist, and catch up with the class later:

Click here to access the Project Proposal Template Checklist!

Now, butts on seats, no talking, and let the class begin!
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This is a guest post written by Ashley Ferro, a freelance content writer & copywriter specializing in SEO content marketing.

There’s nothing more frustrating to a project manager than witnessing the slow, painful death of a healthy project to the beast known as scope creep. When last minute changes transform their straightforward, A-to-B project plan into a sprawling mess of up-ended sprint plans and gold-plated feature requests, branching out in all directions with no concern for time or resources.

In one extreme example, the head contractor for the extension of a city library ended up actually suing their client in a scope-creep induced rage, claiming that their almost 55-week delay was a direct result of the large number of last minute changes.

In order for a project to be successfully completed on time, the project manager and their team need to agree on a clearly defined project scope before getting started.

However, life isn’t so straight forward and changes to the project will inevitably need to happen.

But additional problems can arise if the changes aren’t dealt with properly.

Scope creep can quietly sneak its way into your project and set your team down an unproductive and self-destructive path, wasting your company’s resources, missing deadlines, weakening team communication and, ultimately, ruining any chance of your project’s success.

So what can you do to avoid this fate, and overcome scope creep once and for all?

In this Process Street article, we’ll be covering everything you need to know scope creep–from what (and who) causes it, to how to manage it, even in an agile environment where change is embraced.

We’ll be covering:

• What is scope creep?
• How different stakeholders can contribute to scope creep
• What are some common causes of scope creep?
• Most effective ways to manage scope creep
• What we can learn from Agile to prevent scope creep?
• Using Process Street to avoid scope creep
• Additional project management resources

If, however, you’re struggling with planning your own projects and want a quick solution, grab our free Project Request Form Template below!

So, let’s get started with the basics!

The excitement around a new project is intoxicating.

After all, it’s an opportunity for your team to collaborate and put their well-honed skills to use.

But with important projects, excitement can easily turn into dread. Especially considering that 70% of organizations have failed one or more of their projects in the last 12 months, with a lack of clear goals being the main issue.

So how can everyone involved know what’s expected of them? What deliverables they must bring to the table? How their actions figure into the bigger picture? And how can you, the project manager, break the project down into manageable segments?

While The Beatles professed that “love is all you need”, what’s going to be more useful in this scenario is a work breakdown structure.

That’s why, in this Process Street post, you’ll learn what the work breakdown structure is, why it’s so useful, different examples of it, and tips on how to create a work breakdown structure yourself. To boot, you’ll even get your hands on our easy-to-use Work Breakdown Structure Template!

Read through the following sections to get clued-up:

• What is a work breakdown structure (WBS)?
• Work breakdown structure examples
• Why a work breakdown structure is useful
• How to create a work breakdown structure
• Use Process Street for completing projects and processes alike!

Or, if you’re eager to get the template already, here it is:

Click here to get the Work Breakdown Structure Template!

Let’s break it down.

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Product roadmaps are an essential part of understanding how to align your product to a long-term vision for product-market fit. They are also one of the key deliverables for product managers and are useful to almost all teams and stakeholders.

What the product roadmap should provide:

• Clear overview of key launch dates and milestones
• Clearly communicate which teams are responsible for what
• Clearly communicate important deadlines and time allocation
• A beacon to align different teams to core company goals and objectives

What the roadmap shouldn’t include:

• Goals and objectives unrelated to the product
• Overload of information about specific product features and specifications for development
• Big Surprises
• Too much data without clear association with company goals or objectives

In this Process Street article, we’ll be looking at:

• What is a product roadmap?
• Planning the product roadmap
• Key elements of a product roadmap
• How to build a product roadmap
• Free product roadmap template
• Best practices for creating a product roadmap template
• Mistakes to avoid when building your roadmap
• More tools for product success

First off, here’s a template you can use to get started building your own product roadmap.

Product roadmap process

For those of you who came just for the template, here it is:

If you’re interested in the why behind this template design, and more insight into an effective product roadmap approach, read on!

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